Lari’s Writing blog

Ok. Now I’m getting serious about First Aid Four (FA4 to its friends).

After spending all summer growing inside my head, and occasionally leaping out into scribbles in notebooks, the final First Aid novel is about to start becoming sentences, paragraphs and chapters.

And not only does the new adventure have a folder in my computer (to be honest, I created that folder 30 minutes after sending the final edit of the third book to my editor – I don’t like hanging about), it also has a shelf in my study.

To make room, I’ve had to clear out the Storm Singing shelf. I’m not sure why FA3 still had a shelf – I finished writing it months ago, and I couldn’t make any changes once it was printed. But I just hadn’t got round to clearing all the marked up manuscripts (most to be recycled, a few key ones to be kept to remind me how a book changes) and the maps, the notebooks, the pictures, the news cuttings and the piles of books. Some of the books will be useful for FA4 (like the very old fashioned veterinary text book!) The books of sea legends will move to my folklore and myth bookcase. And the scientific books about seals and killer whales will go out on the shelf in the hall where we keep all our reference books for reading when we’re queuing for the loo. But what about the kayaking and scuba-diving books? I bought them to help me write the scenes on and under the water. But I’ve never been kayaking and scuba diving, and I don’t really have time to start. However I hate getting rid of books, especially books which have inspired me. So perhaps they will just find another shelf, a shelf for books I might need again in a few years time (in case Rona has an adventure on her own, and needs me to write it for her…)

And I’ve now got a collection of books to inspire FA4. It’s not a new collection, I’ve been hunting them down and reading them all summer. But I just had them lying around, tripping up visitors, getting in the way of sleeping cats, and weighing down rucksacks when we were on holiday. Now they are all gathered together on one shelf, looking like a proper springboard for a book. But I’m not going to tell you what they are! They are about certain kinds of legends, and certain parts of Scotland, but if I told you their titles, you would guess too much about Helen’s adventure.

So. There is a shelf. It is filled with many books. But there is still plenty of space for the chapters of the book that the shelf is there to help me write!

If you really want to know more about FA4, you could come along to my Edinburgh Book Festival event on Saturday, ask me difficult questions and see if you can trick me into giving a few hints away!

(I’m at the Corner Theatre in Charlotte Square, at 10.30 am, Saturday 27th August, and you can get tickets from edbookfest.co.uk)

I’ve just started to think about what I’m going to do in my Edinburgh Book Festival event next Saturday morning. The first thing I do is read the programme, so that I can plan to talk about what the audience hoped they were coming to hear.

And this time, apparently, I am going to…

… tell you about her award-winning Fabled Beasts series set in Scotland but featuring monsters and heroes from Greek and Celtic myths. She’ll share her favourite legends and tell all about the heroes who face their fears and destroy the monsters.

So when you’re reading that and thinking, “that’s sounds fun, let’s go and hear Lari do that,” I’m reading it and thinking, “that’s sounds fun, how on earth am I going to do that…?”

And this is what I’m thinking:

Alright. All three books in the series. In 55 minutes. I’ll have to find short readings…

Celtic and Greek myths? Ok, I am inspired by Celtic and Greek myths (hard to deny that with a centaur and a minotaur in First Aid for Fairies, and Tir nan Og in Wolf Notes) but I also love Viking myths, and Storm Singing was mostly influenced by Orcadian legends and an Inuit myth, but I’m happy to chat about Celtic and Greek.

Then heroes destroying monsters. Great. I love destroying monsters. No. Hold on. Wait a minute. Heroes? HEROES? What about heroines? What about Helen and Rona and Lavender and Pearl and Emmie and all the GIRLS I write about defeating baddies?

Ok. NOW I’m inspired. Now I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to find lots of heroines from Greek and Celtic myth (and beyond), and tell you how they inspire me. And if they’re new to me, if they haven’t inspired me already, then their stories can inspire the next First Aid book. Because I’m not sure how to defeat that final baddie, and perhaps I need help from a few more heroines…

So, I’m off to start searching for legendary and mythical heroines. If you have any favourites, do let me know!

(And if you want to come along and hear about heroines and heroes defeating monsters, I’m at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday 27th August, at 10.30 am, and you can get tickets at edbookfest.co.uk.)

The North West corner of Sutherland is the least populated part of Western Europe, which makes it a great place for fabled beasts to explore undetected, but a pretty risky place to do book events, because I could end up just reading to myself. So I was very impressed at how many people, locals and visitors, turned up to hear about Storm Singing. I did author events in Smoo Cave (and it was just as much fun telling a Viking legend in the cave as I’d hoped, and even more fun reading the scene set in the cave…) and in a community centre in Bettyhill, and in both cases 19 kids turned up and they all brought adults with them too. (19 is very exact, but we counted. I could say about 20, but it would sound like I was guessing, and I’m not!)

So, I was pretty impressed that for a place with a tiny and very scattered population, I managed to chat to 38 readers in a couple of days, about mermaids, sea monsters, cliff hangers and setting scenes in caves.

In between the events I was meant to be on holiday, so I did spend a bit of time having fun on beaches too, slithering on wet rocks, teetering on loose stones, slipping on seaweed, and being constantly reminded of Yann falling in rock pools on the first page of Storm Singing. So I kept apologising to him for putting him in such dangerous and undignified positions. And then I planned even more dangerous situations for him for the next book (which I was making long, scribbly, slightly damp notes about most of the holiday too!)

So now I’m back home, I’m getting ready for the Edinburgh Book Festival (I’m doing an event on the last Saturday, 27th August, so I have plenty of time to enjoy seeing other authors first!) but I’m also getting seriously into planning research trips and plot complications for First Aid Four. (It has no title yet, but plenty of baddies…)

(I’ll put a photo of the event in the cave up as soon as I’ve unpacked the camera!)

I’ve just done two of the weirdest author events ever. The libraries’ summer reading challenge this year has a circus theme, and so I was asked to talk about writing and words and general fun with books at a couple of libraries this week. That’s the sort of thing I do all the time. But this time, because it was a circus theme, I was doing the event with CLOWNS. I’ve only ever had one experience with a clown, when he decided it would be very amusing to interrupt me while I was telling a rather serious Greek myth to some P7s. Which wasn’t helpful. So I was a bit nervous about working with Oli and Gus in Hawick yesterday and Edinburgh today. But they were lovely. Really funny, very good at juggling with penguins, umbrellas, trumpets, hats, silver cups, and all sort of other oddly shaped things. They were really easy to work with too – we even discussed when it was ok to heckle. And I think I may have heckled them more than they heckled me.

We made up stories together – them juggling objects, and me making stories up about what they were juggling. And the harder, pokier, and more dangerous the objects the better!

So, that was fun. And slightly silly. But the silliest thing I did today wasn’t inventing, on the spot, a story about a cockerel whose alarm clock didn’t work, it was shouting ‘bottom’ in front of several politicians.

The event today was in a the gorgeous reference library in Edinburgh Central Library. It’s a huge room, with a massive high painted dome. I go there to research books (I did a lot of research for Rocking Horse War there, right under the dome) and it’s normally a very serious, quiet room full of students and researchers and if you drop a pencil or open a book loudly you worry that you’ve disturbed someone’s very important thought. So normally I’m very quiet there. But today, there were only me and the kids and lots of important politicians who’d come to see how the reading challenge worked. No desks, no researchers. So I stood under the dome, and I shouted ‘BOTTOM!!’

Now, I didn’t just do that for fun. Though it was fun. I did it because we were talking about our favourite words, and how to make stories and books out of them. And I’ve written a book about bottoms, and bottom is a pretty good word, so it made complete sense to shout ‘Bottom!’ in this very beautiful serious room.

And I got away with it! But I don’t know if they’ll ever let me back…

So, here are some pictures of me with the lovely, wonderful, talented, funny and utterly non-terrifying Oli and Gus.
Here also is a bit of footage from the Scottish Government website – the first time ever, I’m assured, that someone has said BOTTOM on the website about running the country. . .

(And please do go into your local library and see what fun things they’re doing for the Circus Stars Reading Challenge!)

Whew!

I’ve just done author events at six different Waterstones in a fortnight. I’ve done Newton Mearns, Stirling, Ayr, St Andrews, East Kilbride and Inverness. West, South, East, and North. All lovely shops, all with lovely (bookloving) booksellers.

But it can be fairly nerve-shredding, sitting, on your own, in a shop, waiting to see if anyone can be bothered turning up to listen to you read. (Though someone always did! Which always feels like a miracle, especially on all these beautifully sunny days we’ve been having!)

But I think it’s important to get in about bookshops and support them (and don’t worry, I’m not just doing Waterstones – the Waterstones clustered together in July, but I’m doing two independent bookshops this summer too, and more in the autumn I hope.)

I know you can buy books online, but you can’t chat to a bookseller online, or flick through the book, or just see what catches your eye on the shelf. And you can’t meet an author online either, not in the same way.

So bookshops and authors are going to have to offer bookbuyers something more than online buying can, and me sitting there reading The Big Bottom Hunt to four year olds, or telling an Inuit sea legend which inspired Storm Singing to ten year olds, is one of those ‘something more’s!

And it gives me a chance to meet you – meet readers, meet parents, meet teachers on holiday, and perhaps meet a few kids who have never heard of my books, but who heard this loud voice from the back of the store, and just wandered up to see who it was. That’s possibly one of the best reasons for visiting bookshops! (And also one of the reasons why my voice is a bit croaky today!)

So, that was my fortnight of Waterstones. Next week is my week of clowns, then after that, it’s my week of caves. (Caves and clowns? Yes, really, check out my diary if you don’t believe me!)

When I’m touring round Scotland (I’m doing six different Waterstones in a this fortnight, and five libraries in the couple of weeks after that, all the way from Hawick to Portree…) what do I do on all these journeys? Isn’t travelling a terrible waste of time when I could be writing? (The next book, Lari, get on with the next book…)

I don’t think it is a waste of time, because I do most of it by train and bus, and that adds up to a lot of thinking and reading and people-watching time. And quite a lot of wild dog time too.

In the last couple of days, I’ve sat at a very crowded station watching a very odd traffic jam at the ticket machines made up of folk on their way to T-in the Park (all wellies and manky rucksacks) and some very fancy ladies on their way to a wedding; and sat in a quiet train watching a group of girls experiment to see how many people could fit round one wee train table;

I’ve discussed the riddles in the Hobbit with a very well-read taxi driver;

I’ve read a book about maths (for fun), and a book of Native American Coyote stories (for research);

I’ve gazed out the window and seen wide-eared deer in a field watching the train go past, really tall foxgloves growing by the track, and a short but lovely glimpse of three foxes standing still in a railway yard.

And I write too. I always have a briefcase full of notebooks, for scribbling down ideas, or a laptop, if I want to write entire pages. (Or blog posts – both this post and the previous one have been written on trains.) And many of my books have been written when I was travelling or at least out of the house.

The first scene of Wolf Notes was written on a train back from Aberdeen years ago, and the first page of Storm Singing was written in a corridor while I was waiting for my kids to come out of a dance class. So out and about works for me, just like it does for the fabled beasts.

So all this travelling isn’t a waste of time at all – it’s much more inspiring than sitting in my study. And with a much greater chance of seeing foxes!

I’m visiting quite a few bits of Scotland during the summer holidays, but not on holiday!

Because I’ve had two books published in the last couple of months, my publishers are sending me round various book-y locations to read the books and chat about writing (and sign any books people want to buy!) I’m visiting bookshops, libraries and a cave. Is a cave a book-y location? It is, if you’ve written a book set in a cave!

And what am I doing in all these place? Usually I’m reading my picture books (How to Make a Heron Happy and The Big Bottom Hunt) and chatting with small people about stories, then after a quick drink of water, I’m shifting gears into Storm Singing and talking legends, myths, location research and cliffhangers with older readers.

It’s an uneven tour because it’s spread around places I know and have been before, like Skye, Ayr, Inverness; places I’ve never done an event before but thought might be fun, like East Kilbride and St Andrews; and the one place where Storm Singing is actually set, ie Sutherland. (That’s where I’m doing the event in the cave, and if you are anywhere near Smoo Cave on 28th July, it would be lovely to see you there!)

However, today wasn’t quite as exotic or dark as a cave, because I’m just back from meeting readers and families in Stirling, in the Waterstones in the Thistle Centre. And what brilliant readers they were. There was a lovely little girl who did a great grumpy heron face every time I read: “But the heron still looked….grumpy”; and then later, there was a large group of readers, lots of whom had met me at local schools, had read First Aid and Wolf Notes and were very keen to get stuck into Storm Singing. They asked the most fabulous questions I’ve been asked in a bookshop, including really complicated ones about publishing. I was very impressed with the calibre of bookbuyers from Stirling (and Clackmannanshire) and would love to go back and do more events!

So if you want to come and see me in the summer, check out my diary page and if my uneven and very unsystematic way of picking event locations means that I’m not coming anywhere near you, then do just ask your local bookshop or library or even your school to see if they can arrange for me to visit. Though I wonder if anyone else will ask such knowledgable questions as the Stirling audience?

I’ve launched Storm Singing!  The only book I’ve written (so far) which contains any boats is now well and truly launched into the big wide world.

My publishers held a launch party last night, and we invited some book groups and school pupils, who got to nibble some crisps, and listen to me read a little bit of the book, and then stand in a VERY LONG LINE to get books signed.  They also heard me announce a very exciting competition which my publishers are running to celebrate the launch of Storm Singing – a competition called Set the Scene, which is basically me asking for a bit of help with the next book.

I get so much inspiration from the feedback readers give me, that we thought it was worth tapping into that for the fourth and final book in the First Aid series.

And to be honest, I’ve started to run out of the bits of Scotland which I know, to use as locations for the next book.  Helen’s been to Orkney and Skye on dragon back, she’s been in the tunnels under Edinburgh with a phoenix, and now she’s rowed all round the cliffs and caves of Sutherland with a centaur (which isn’t easy!) so now I’m wondering what magical and marvellous bits of Scotland I can set the next adventure in.  So that’s what the competition is about – to suggest a location for the next book.

I announced this competition to the 50 or so kids at the launch last night, and they immediately started thinking of ideas (some of them even put their hands up right away!) and by the time they’d all queued up to get their books signed, they all wanted to tell me their ideas, so not only did I get to sign lots of the books (how do you spell your name?, what would you like me to write in it?) but I also got to hear lots of ideas for the next book and where it should be set!  But the kids who came to the launch won’t have any more chance than you to win – we’ll wait till all the entries are in, then we’ll pick the best place for a chase, the best site for a fight.  To enter, check out Floris’s website.

So, now that I’ve launched Storm Singing, I’d better start writing the next one.  I still don’t have a title for it (the folder on my computer is called Fourth Aid!) nor of course, do I yet know exactly where it will be set.  But I do have a baddie, and I do have a problem, and that is enough to be going on with for now…

But don’t worry!  You won’t need wellies or a rain coat. I’ve already got cold and wet and windblown on your behalf researching my next book, Storm Singing, and it’s very nearly here!

storm singing cover

And isn’t the cover fabulous!

I’ve actually held my own first copy of Strom Singing. In fact I’ve even read out loud from it, to some classes in Edinburgh and some classes in North Ayrshire, just to see how it sounds and how they reacted.  And luckily for me, they all wanted me to read on… But of course I didn’t, because my publisher was there, giving me a hard stare until I said:  If you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to read the book!  (available in all good bookshops and libraries etc…)

And now, this is the nerve-wracking bit for me, waiting for the actual publication date next week.  Because now I’m waiting to see what you all think of it – waiting til someone reads Storm Singing at top speed, then writes to me or emails me or posts something on my blog or chats to me in a bookshop and TELLS ME WHAT THEY THINK OF IT!

I don’t think it’s really a book until other people have read it.  Otherwise I could just mutter stories to myself in my study, and be happy with that. I write books to share them with other people, so waiting to see what you think of what I ask my characters to do, and how they react, is really important!  And in Storm Singing, I think I may have asked them, especially Helen, Rona and Yann, to do more difficult things than anything I’ve asked of them before…

So, once you’ve got your own Storm, let me know what you think!

Every time I read How to Make a Heron Happy out loud, I feel slightly guilty. Because there’s a line, near the end, about the heron flying away if it isn’t happy in the park.  And in between me writing that line, and the book being published, the heron in my local park DID fly away. It wasn’t happy, I assume, because all the ice last winter made it impossible to hunt. But it never came back.  And I felt slightly responsible, or at least, slightly embarrassed that here was a book about my favourite bird, set in my favourite park, and the bird was no longer there.  Was it my fault?  Was it some dreadful coincidence, or actually a consequence of my book?  That’s called magical thinking, apparently, according to a psychiatrist of my acquaintance – thinking that your actions could cause or affect something totally unconnected.  I do know that the heron didn’t fly away because I wrote a book, that it wasn’t divine punishment for hubris, or fate’s practical joke.  It flew away because we had a very bad winter.  I also know that when I used to produce radio programmes for the BBC, and once in a while some terrible social or health issue that I had researched then subsequently happened to me, or someone I knew, it wasn’t actually connected.  Because that’s magical thinking.  And therefore it must be a total coincidence that this week, when I’ve just done my last event to promote the Heron book, and I am about to move on to the very first event to promote Storm Signing, THIS VERY WEEK, I saw five herons in the park.  Five.  I ran round an extra lap just to count them again to be sure.  Magical thinking?  I suppose that if you write about selkies, centaurs and dragons, you do need to think magically!  However, just to prove I am not superstitious, I offer as evidence the fact that I’m entirely delighted to be meeting pupils from how many different primary schools in North Ayrshire this week, on the Storm Singing tour?  Thirteen.